Supermarket Perimeter - October 2020 - 62

TECHNOLOGY

Invatron helps retailers drive incremental gross margins through better
operational practices and predictive demand forecasting.

have what they want, when and
where they want it across their
fresh offering," she said.
Invatron's goal is to help
retailers drive incremental
gross margins by focusing on
better operational practices and
predictive demand forecasting
combined with more efficient
operational practices to keep fresh
in stock throughout the day while
maintaining a perpetual inventory.
"Retailers have to order
properly to optimize in-stock
positions and shrink levels,
produce in store goods, such
as salads, sandwiches, bread
and cut meat, in a timely and
labor efficient manner so that
you maintain adequate profit
margins," she said. "This can only
be achieved by using technology
and best practices - which
store associates like and use as
it allows them to do their jobs
better and faster."
Invatron's solutions, she added,
center on activities including
merchandising, forecasting,
ordering, baking, cutting,
assembling, scheduling, and
maintaining a perpetual inventory.
62 - OCTOBER 2020

SP_Oct20.indb 62

New cloud-based tool
for commissaries
New for At-Your-Service is a
cloud-based version of one of
its old products that is especially
helpful for commissaries, central
kitchens and other offsite facilities
provided prepared and other
foods to grocery retailers.
The old version ran on
the company's server-based
inventory management system.
When At-Your-Service went 100%
cloud-based, converting the
service went on the back burner,
Starobin said.
But increased demand from
a growing commissary industry
put it back front and center.
"We're selling to enough bigger
companies now," Starobin said.
"Users who had a single store are
getting to the point where they
have three, four stores, the magic
number where they feel the need
for a central kitchen."
The commissary-specific
software's advantage is providing
instant updates to recipes,
regardless of their size. With
Reciprofity, commissary and
other offsite users can know the

exact quantities of all ingredients
and have them ordered instantly,
keeping inventory accurate and
avoiding food loss.
"Commissaries are designed
to consolidate, to add efficiency,
but if they're not tracking
what's going out, did we waste
anything," they're not taking
full advantage of their business
model, Starobin said.
Inventory management
software also helps take a lot of
the guesswork out of the work
commissaries and retailers face
in prepared food production,
Starobin said.
"One of the issues I've heard
from stores, from kitchen people,
is that when it comes time to
production and you have to make
a large number of sandwiches,
for example, there's a lot of
guesswork in that practice. Prep
people pull out what they need
and they never underestimate.
And once it's out of inventory, it
doesn't go back."
In the case of the sandwiches,
that means that maybe 30
tomatoes get pulled for the order
instead of the 25 that are needed.
Or if it's a fruit like cantaloupe,
prep cooks aren't as careful about
getting the maximum amount
of usable fruit out of each piece,
because they know that they've
likely pulled more than is needed.
With inventory management
software, regardless of the size
of the order, kitchen managers
know instantly the exact amount
of each ingredient needed.

Paper out, tablet in
New for Jera this year is a tabletbased production planner, the
latest iteration in the company's
"what to make, when" software,
that Barrett said is perfect for
supermarkets.
"Customers are looking for
simpler solutions," he said. "They
don't want employees to have

to do analytics. So we decided
to come up with an interactive,
tablet-based version."
The product is perfect for
prepared foods sections in the
perimeters of grocery stores and
their commissary, central kitchen
or other offsite value-added
providers.
Previous versions of similar
products were paper-based,
which is the last thing grocery
foodservice departments in
today's market, Barrett said. They
already have enough of that.
"Supermarkets are notorious
for a lot of paper-based" record
keeping in retail foodservice and
other departments, Barrett said.
"This is simpler to interact with,
it's easier to track, and there's no
more data recording you have to
do manually."
On the horizon for Jera is
what Barrett calls "exception
reporting," a system in which
users will be notified only when
there's a problem (or "exception")
that needs to be fixed, instead of
being bombarded with data that
just shows things are working as
they should.
"It helps bring problems to the
surface," he said.
Jera also has seen strong
demand for its new printer label
integration software, which
allows retail foodservice and
other value-added categories
in the grocery perimeter to
compare their inventory forecasts
with what they actually wound
up using. The software connects
with Web-enabled label printers
that helps address problems
related to implied waste. It
decreases the need for accurate
employee waste recording, which
is always bad, Barrett said, since
people are not good at entering
such data themselves.
"We have one customer on
it and three others who are
considering it," he said.

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Supermarket Perimeter - October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Supermarket Perimeter - October 2020

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